


Ametrine and Agate

by angelic_shapeshifter



Series: Naruto college au to be named later [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: College AU, Gen, This is weird, agender sasori, bear w/ me, in the meantime enjoy this if u can, there's some backstory in this au i need to work out, they're related!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 17:06:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17985197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelic_shapeshifter/pseuds/angelic_shapeshifter
Summary: Kankuro visits Sasori in the studio.





	Ametrine and Agate

Kankuro cautiously approached the art building. It smelled of oil paint, wood shavings, sulfur and sweetly-flavored vape fills (Deidara’s). It was a little overwhelming.

Chiyo, his great aunt and the dean of students, expressed concern to him about his cousin spending too much time in the studio. When he stood there staring into nothingness for long enough she offered him twenty dollars to go check on them.

Twenty dollars. That could take someone on a date. Or buy him a backpack’s volume of junk food, which seemed like the more likely application.

The studio had a small foyer with a gender-neutral bathroom to the left. A hallway led to two doorless openings on the right wall, one that only had two studio spaces: one littered with clay-splattered canvas fabric, and one further on with puppet appendages hanging from the walls and a light on that cast a scruffy-haired shadow on the wall.

Kankuro approached cautiously and knocked on the wall between the two studios. “Hey Sasori.”

Sasori straightened up robotically from the toolbench on the far side. They turned to look over their shoulder. “So you’ve found me.”

“You’re still-” he gestured to his hair “-with the red, I like it.”

“Mm. What’re you here for?”

“The old lady’s worried about you.” Kankuro took a few steps forward into the workshop.

“You don’t talk to me for how long and that’s the first thing you say?”

“Hey, I complimented you first.”

Sasori looked back to their work. “Thank you then. What does Chiyo want?”

“Probably, to know about the regular concerned grandparent things. Your health, your friends, your broken fingers.” Kankuro could almost hear their scowl and covered his smirk just in case Sasori could see it.

“You can tell her I’m fine. I’m eating, sleeping, I see Deidara when he comes in here and I go back to the dorm. My fingers are healing fine.”

Kankuro nodded. He gestured to a life-sized puppet strung in a sitting position on a different workbench. “What’s all this?”

Sasori put down their tools and turned around to face him. “My semester project. It’s going to be a presentation with puppets that tells a story.”

“That’s damn amazing,” Kankuro commented, staring into the puppet’s glassy yellow eyes. “You’ve made these for awhile, haven’t you? How much do these go for?” It’s not like he had money. His father had money, it’s not like he wanted to give any to his son to buy something of which he already had plenty.

Sasori blinked. “You should know I’ve been making them for awhile, you have one in your room back home. And seven to nine hundred each. I’ve made smaller ones for seventy and eighty but those are more trouble than they’re worth. Life sized is preferrable.”

Oh yeah. Right. He had been given Scarecrow for a gift on some long-past birthday. For a long while afterward he had wanted to be an artist just like cousin Sasori, until his dad drilled it into him that he could use the same skills Sasori used to make puppets to become an engineer and actually make money after he had been convinced the only one of the three of them to do what he wanted and become a businessperson was Temari. But here was his cousin, going to school and turning in puppets for a grade before selling them for hundreds.

“I can help you out if you ever need it,” he blurted out before he could stop himself.

Sasori paused to consider and looked a bit like a computer starting up. “I’ll tell you if I need it then. Do you have my number?” When Kankuro shook his head they unlocked their phone and handed it to Kankuro before turning back to their work.

“You will not touch Sandaime though, understood?” Sasori added over his shoulder.

Kankuro looked up and nodded with an ‘uh-huh’. He could guess that the puppet he had been staring at, the one with segmented yellow eyes, was Sandaime. “Can I ask what the story is?”

Sasori pressed their forehead to the wall in a way that somewhat alarmed their cousin. “It’s inspired by mythological epic poetry from centuries ago, where a king will leave his family and his people--” they pointed to two unfinished dolls slumped in the corner, one with long hair and the other with short red hair not unlike Sasori’s “-- and battle monsters--” they hit the wall near a sketch of a puppet on all fours with a scorpion’s tail coming out of a demon’s mouth “--on a quest for eternal glory. Sandaime is the king, of course.”

Kankuro nodded, and echoed “that’s amazing.”

Sasori leaned their arms on their workbench. “You can be dismissed for tonight,” they said. “If you want to you can borrow one of those books and learn a bit about the process. Actually, if you want to work with me I’d ask you did read at least one.”

The books in question lay in small stacks against the wall under the workbench. Kankuro flipped through them--woodworking manuals, puppet construction books, books on laquer and wood paint and carving and one that sent a shiver down his spine about preserving organs in formaldehyde. He chose one of the first variety, since he had figured out puppet construction years ago at least on an ameture level by taking apart his own puppets and putting them back together again. He had a very poor understanding of woodwork; after a moment he took the books on paint and laquer as well.

He stood again and Sasori seemed to have dozed off standing up. “Goodnight,” Kankuro said, which made the artist jolt and nod to him, murmuring a “goodnight” back.

“Get some sleep Sas.”

“I will,” was the stubborn reply.

The sun was coming up when Kankuro left the building.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a chapter of a longer book but it didn't really connect to any of the other chapters so i figured i could post it on its own. Also the title means nothing, i just didn't know what to put bfhgjh


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